Ontario government tells colleges and universities they must scrap late payment fees, early tuition deadlines and ‘flat-fee’ rates.

U of T business student Randall Hettinger was working 2 jobs to avoid having to miss a Nov. 15 deadline for paying the rest of his tuition. Queen's Park on Thursday told colleges and universities they must do away with late fees and early tuition deadlines.

Ontario college and university students are cheering new rules that will scrap late-payment fees and early tuition deadlines, and curb the kind of “flat fees” for part-time course-loads that students have long said price higher learning beyond their reach.

Starting next fall, post-secondary institutions no longer will be allowed to demand tuition payments before the beginning of August — some wanted payment as early as June — and can ask for a deposit of no more than $500 or 10 per cent of full tuition, whichever is more.

Schools also will have to give students the choice of paying by semester, rather than for the whole year all at once, as at some schools, including the University of Toronto.

Those using the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) no longer will have to pay tuition before they actually receive their loan, thus scrapping the need for late fees, deferral charges and even late interest payments. At the U of T, those who did not pay full tuition by Nov. 15 have had to pay a 1.5 per cent monthly interest charge until they pay — a charge that generated some $3 million a year in revenue for the university.

“It’s definitely an improvement,” noted Brandon Sloan, communications director for the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, which has long lobbied against extra deferral fees, which range from $40 to more than $100 and posed “a huge issue for a lot of students — low-income, aboriginal, students with disabilities, all those least able to afford them.”

At the U of T, student leaders said they were excited to hear that the university will have to stop charging students full tuition for as little as 60 per cent of a full course load — take three courses, pay for five. The so-called “flat-fee” system is used by nine universities, usually for 70 or 80 per cent of a program, but starting in 2015, no school can charge full price for less than 70 per cent of a course load, and by 2016 none can charge full price for less than 80 per cent of a course load.

“Students are excited. I am glad the government has responded to the thousands of petitions students at the University of Toronto have sent,” said Agnes So, vice president of the U of T’s student union.

“But I think we need to keep pushing until there is no longer a way that students can be forced to pay for courses they do not take. It’s simply unfair.”

Students with a disability, who often need to take a lighter course load, will be excused from any flat-fee system, according to the new rules, although the U of T has always excused them from any flat fee. The province will keep its freeze on any new flat fees.

“This new tuition billing policy increases fairness and affordability for students and their families,” said MPP Brad Duguid, minister of training, colleges and universities. “Our government is ensuring consistency in how tuition is billed across the post-secondary system, saving students money and creating a simpler, more transparent fee system.”

U of T President Meric Gertler told the Star that losing the 60-per-cent flat-fee system for arts and science students on the downtown campus will mean a $16-million loss in revenue, which had been earmarked to hire more professors, keep classes smaller, offer undergrads more research opportunities and pay for overseas study weeks.

“We’re pretty disappointed with this news, although we appreciate they’re giving us at least a year to figure out how we’re going to deal with the change,” said Gertler. “We’re already an incredibly lean organization, so we’ll have to get even leaner to account for this lost revenue.”

The College Student Alliance expressed concern that the new rules will let institutions charge extra for some online quizzes and tests, even though the cost of mandatory tests are supposed to be covered by a student’s tuition, said Tyler Epp, the group’s director of advocacy. The new rules state that where a course relies substantially on quizzes and assessments included in a resource such as an online textbook, colleges must set some sort of policy about the cost of these, which could include a rebate for the portion of the online textbook cost that goes toward the tests.

“This still allows institutions to force students to pay extra for these digital assessments, which are growing in popularity,” said Epp, whose group represents some 135,000 students at 15 community colleges.

However Epp welcomed the ban on deferral fees for late tuition and noted that any early deposit now must be taken off tuition, rather than be an extra charge.

However, he said that the fact that Queen’s Park is giving universities until 2016 to change their flat-fee practice “is not helping. We feel these changes could be done in a faster manner.”

Brandon Sloan of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance also welcomed the new ban on extra “graduation fees” of around $100, which many schools have charged to cover the cost of processing the paperwork for a student to graduate.

“We believe if a student is paying up to $7,300 a year for four years, they shouldn’t have to pay even more to graduate,” said Sloan. “It was very unfair.”

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